NEWS & INSIGHT
HOW MINDFUL MEDITATION CAN INFLUENCE SOCIAL MEDIA BEHAVIOUR
SCHOOL: University of Auckland Business School COUNTRY: New Zealand
X (formerly known as Twitter) users who completed a 60-day online meditation challenge were more likely to post positive original tweets, according to a University of Auckland study. This piece of research is one of the first to track real-world behavioural changes in a group of Twitter users before, during and after attempting a mindfulness challenge. The study was led by University of Auckland Business School researcher Shohil Kishore, to see if and how contemplative practice, such as mindfulness, might influence online behaviour. Results were based on an analysis of anonymised tweets from meditation challenge participants and those who had intended to complete the challenge but didn’t follow up on it. Kishore and fellow researchers Sanghyub John Lee from the University of Auckland and Amy Errmann from Auckland University of Technology found that those who completed the 60-day online meditation challenge showed an increase in posting original tweets compared to retweets.
“We found that they were posting more content overall and more original content compared to retweets. In addition, the tweets they were creating were more positive in nature than [those posted by] their counterparts who didn’t complete the challenge,” noted Kishore. In terms of retweets, the users who finished the meditation challenge displayed fewer positive reactions than the incomplete group. Meanwhile, users who finished the challenge exhibited higher engagement levels in terms of replies and length of tweets. The study also found that Twitter users who completed the challenge exhibited more positive emotions in original tweets. “There’s a lot of research on mindfulness in terms of investigating the effects of meditation on positivity, but we wanted to explore whether it can result in any tangible change. Our findings indicate that an individual’s relationship with technology can evolve over time when engaging in meditation regularly,” concluded Kishore. CD
Ambition | NOVEMBER 2023 | 9
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online